Micro Resources

Looks like the ink is dry on Desktop GIS and it should start shipping soon. You can get the full scoop from the Pragmatic Bookshelf.

Update: It’s now shipping. See the announcement.

After a rather long lapse, I had the occasion to write some Java code recently (mainly because it didn’t look like Howard’s PySDE was functional).

I didn’t like it.

Not to start a language flame war, but after using Python almost exclusively for 6 months, I found Java to be cumbersome. I kept thinking “if it were Python I could do it this way”.

Sending an email from Java—frightening. From Python—simple.

Lest you think I’m a Java newbie, I’ve been using it for both desktop and web applications for over 10 years.

Its ease of use and rapid development time, coupled with the fact that Python is the de facto “GIS” scripting language in most arenas, makes it my new favorite language.

Of course the old axiom still stands—To each his own…

This weekend I finished reviewing Pragmatic Version Control Using Git by Travis Swicegood. If you are a git user or interested in learning about the latest in version control for your source code, check it out. The book is available in beta now.

QgisToMapServer converts a saved QGIS project file to a map file, ready to be served with MapServer. A binary preview version for both Mac and Windows is available now. For Linux/Unix users, the source code is available from the Git repository.

QgisToMapServer is different from the plugin in QGIS. It is a standalone Python application providing the following features:

• Create MapServer map files from saved QGIS project files
• Preview the map file (requires shp2img)
• Customizable data path

For full details see: http://spatialserver.net/qgis2ms